Birdies’ Undefeated Season Ends

The Birdies, Stuyvesant’s girls’ golf team, started their semifinals match against Tottenville fiercely as senior and first starter Catherine Joh defeated her opponent in the first hole. The team hoped to build momentum from this exhilarating victory. However, Joh lost the match by a final score of four up. The remaining four starters were unable to get a rally going, bringing the Birdies’ season to an end at the hands of powerhouse Tottenville, 5-0. “Certainly, we were slightly disappointed we didn’t advance to the finals, but to even get to play against Tottenville is an achievement in and of itself,” sophomore and second starter Charlotte Yee said.

Overall, however, the Birdies have no reason to be disappointed. “It was a pretty successful season. We won our first 10 games, made it to semifinals, played very well in semifinals, but lost to Tottenville. I was pretty happy because we showed we could play,” Coach Emilio Nieves said.

The team certainly did just that, finishing the regular season on top of the Brooklyn division for the fourth season in a row with an undefeated record of 9-0. In fact, the last time the Birdies lost a match in the regular season was the 2014-15 season, in which they finished with a record of 8-1.

The Birdies, however, have not been able to advance past the semifinals in the last four years, an obstacle they hope to overcome next season. This will be a tough task for a team that is losing its first and third starters, seniors Joh and Lucy Liu after this year. “We want to field a team [next season] equally as competitive as this year’s,” Yee said.

Two players who hope to fill those spots are junior Jessica Park and sophomore Kristie Chu. “I want to play in more matches and dedicate myself to golf more, since this is the team I’ve been on since the end of my freshman year,” Park said. Chu expressed her determination as well: “Ideally, I would want for the team to be first in the city,” she said. Chu is not alone, as the team has high hopes for next season, and an appearance in the finals is certainly not out of reach.

“We have three out of five starters, so we should still have a good team. But that just gives the subs an opportunity to step up. The harder they work to step up, the more successful we’ll be next year,” Nieves said.